Emma Sky
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She has become a principal adviser to GEN Ray Odierno, now the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and rose with him from less senior commands, partially because she would give him a totally different perspective than would his conventional staff. Odierno, who had been thought to be overly harsh on civilians as a tactical commander, said
Sky came to more widespread attention as a result on Thomas Ricks' book on the Iraq War, Surge|"Surge" in Iraq and the rethinking involved. [3] The regional commander, GEN David Petraeus, also had acquired a nonmilitary adviser, Sadi Othman, less formally trained than Sky, but the idea of an alternate view had been embraced. Petraeus, himself with a doctorate in international relations, has used planning groups containing both military officers with social science backgrounds and pure social scientists, as has GEN Stanley McChrystal in Afghanistan War (2001-2021)|Afghanistan. Some have compared her to Gertrude Bell; she first heard the comparison from Iraqis in Kirkuk. She observed that she and Bell came from different generations. “But I understand her love of the place. When anyone makes this comparison, I always think she ends up a spinster in Baghdad committing suicide.”[1] It has occasionally been suggested, in jest, that the best advice comes from advisers at different altitudes. Sky is 5'4" while Odierno is a massive 6'5"; Petraeus is relatively small but Othman is 6' 7" and the first Jordanian to dunk a basketball in a college game. References
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